Battle Scanner (ARMOR Analysis)

Deconstruct competitor strategy, surface exploitable weaknesses, predict their responses to your moves, and generate win/loss playbooks.

When to Use

• Pre-launch competitive assessment
• Competitive deal strategy
• Quarterly competitive landscape refresh
• New competitor entering the market
• Win rate declining against specific competitor

What You'll Need

Critical inputs (ask if not provided):

• Your product/company name and category
• Top 3-5 known competitors

Nice-to-have:

• Signal Radar output (competitive threat signals)
• Win/loss data from CRM
• Customer feedback mentioning competitors

Process

Step 1: 4-Ring Competitor Classification

Map every competitor into concentric rings:

Ring	Type	Threat Level	Examples
Ring 1	Direct -- same problem, same approach	Highest	Head-to-head feature competitors
Ring 2	Indirect -- same problem, different approach	High	Alternative solution categories
Ring 3	Adjacent -- different problem, could pivot	Medium	Companies with overlapping capabilities
Ring 4	Substitute -- manual/DIY/status quo	Baseline	Spreadsheets, manual processes, in-house builds

Step 2: ARMOR Deep Dive (per Ring 1-2 competitor)

Analyze each competitor across 5 dimensions:

Dimension	What to Analyze	Key Questions
Architecture	Product architecture, tech stack, scalability	What are their technical limitations? Where is their tech debt?
Reputation	Brand perception, NPS, review scores, analyst position	Where do customers love them? Where do customers complain?
Moat	Defensibility -- network effects, data, switching costs, IP	What makes them hard to displace? What is their weakest moat?
Openings	Exploitable weaknesses -- complaints, gaps, pricing issues	Where are they vulnerable RIGHT NOW?
Response Prediction	How they will respond to your launch	Will they: fast-follow, price war, FUD, ignore, or acquire?

For Response Prediction, consider:

• Their resources (cash, team size, engineering velocity)
• Their strategic priorities (are they focused elsewhere?)
• Historical behavior (how did they react to past competitive moves?)

Step 3: Win/Loss Pattern Extraction

For each Ring 1 competitor, document:

• Win scenarios: When and why we beat them (deal stage, buyer type, use case)
• Loss scenarios: When and why they beat us (same breakdown)
• Swing factors: What tips deals one way or the other
• Killer questions: Questions that expose their weaknesses in a sales conversation
• Trap questions: Questions they ask to make us look bad (and how to handle them)

Step 4: Competitive Landscape Summary

Create the master competitive landscape document with:

• Market positioning map (2x2 or multi-axis)
• Per-competitor ARMOR summary (1 paragraph each)
• Top 3 strategic competitive moves to make in next 90 days

Output

Save to outputs/battle-scanner-[YYYY-MM-DD].md

Deliverables:

1. Competitive Landscape Map: 4-ring visual with all competitors classified and ARMOR-scored
2. Competitor Profiles: Per-competitor ARMOR deep dive with evidence
3. Win/Loss Playbooks: Scenario-based guides for competitive deal situations
4. Response Prediction Matrix: How each competitor will likely react to your launch with counter-strategies

Chain Connections

• Next skill: Run competitive-exec-brief to create the executive-ready PPTX summary
• Also feeds: position-lock (competitive gaps inform positioning), enablement-forge (battle cards become sales assets)
• Enhanced by: Run after signal-radar (signals reveal competitive threats) and whitespace-finder (gaps show where competitors are weak)